


Midnight Tide

by rostropovich



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Light Angst, Nightmares, wholesome content ?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 16:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15710943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rostropovich/pseuds/rostropovich
Summary: The piratical power couple take back one thing that has been stolen from them.





	Midnight Tide

**Author's Note:**

> written to ottorino respighi's "adagio con variazione" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UCN6twj_TI )

Anne’s eyes opened plainly through the thin sleep that shrouded her like georgette curtains around a four - poster bed as the mattress jolted suddenly. She blinked a few times as she adjusted to the night. A wagon trudged along the road, and the driver called to the mule lamely. Somewhere a glass shattered and a man cackled. Anne shifted her bare legs beneath the once white sheets and the thick, woven wool mexican blanket. She turned to her other side and her eyes, now making out the dark shapes and shadows clearly, settled on the man beside her. Anne didn’t smile, but her heart seemed to broaden like the swells of the ocean as storm clouds swarmed above. Each beat was the deep crash of the hull against the tidal waves.

 

She could see the white of his eyes staring up at the ceiling. What little light sailed through the dusty window from the crescent moon outside illuminated the sheen of sweat on his face. When she spoke, Anne’s voice was gruffer than usual, rough and quiet with disuse. “What’s the matter with you?”

 

Jack’s chest rose high and fell slowly. “A bad dream.”

 

She had been expecting the answer, but it took her by surprise nonetheless. Jack didn’t dream often, or at least he didn’t  _ recognisably _ dream; perhaps he elected not to tell her about them. Anne didn’t think that was very likely, though. “What about?”

 

His dark brown gaze fixed on her as he turned to face her. He reached out to her and let the back of his hand rest against her cheek, bony knuckles soft as they ghosted across skin like palm frond nestling against palm from in the balmy breeze. Jack gave her a flicker of a smile, and Anne couldn’t tell why it was so weak. Was he simply tired or was it sadness? Of all the states Anne had seen him in,  _ sadness _ was rare as a blue moon. Granted, space for sadness was not allotted in the ship manifests of their livelihood, but Anne had never supposed that he felt it anyway and just kept it shrouded from view. She thought he was above sadness.

 

“My mother,” Jack said lamely and Anne blinked; Jack had spoken of his father on many occasions, but never his mother. In a moment of self reflection, Anne realised that she had never spoken of her own either. There was a purity, a sanctity, about Anne’s mother that, like the Lord’s name, seemed like it would be tainted if she ever spoke of her. “I was the one who found the body.” He said, tongue quick as ever. Anne briefly wondered if that was true or if it was the tale of the dream, but soon decided that it mattered not either way. 

 

Anne turned away from him and his hand fell limply from her face and onto the lumpy bed. She sat up, swinging her legs over the side, the wood frame creaking in tired protestation as she did. Anne stood and her feet padded quietly on the floor. She took her clothes from where they were lain over the waxed wicker back of the chair with the uneven legs. The fabric rustled in the thick silence, snapping like little canvas sails. Anne hopped once, twice, trying to hold her balance as she pulled her pants on. 

 

“Anne,” was the word that broke the silence, but in such, he said so much more. 

 

“Come to the beach with me.”

“The beach - ? Please, darling, we only have a finite amount of nights in a bed that only moves when we want it to; is it so much to ask to revel in that fact?” Jack was on his back now and his fingers rubbed at his eyes. 

 

“Get the fuck up.” A boot flew on the bed, then the other, then a coat and shirt and pants. 

 

The northern edge of the archipelago was a desolation, though a beautiful one at that. A great formation of reefs and sandbars left it all but uninhabited, as no ship would dare near the bay, and so none dared to settle. A humid wind rolled down from the dormant volcano to the east, cooled by the night. There had been clouds accumulating before the sun set and, though they could no longer be seen, the absence of the stars heralded their tyrannous presence above. Lightning illuminated the great, cotton patches, shading the voluptuous boundaries of the clouds before plunging the sky back into darkness. The only light that the sky provided was the tall moon, a fraction of a galleon, festooned in the sky by a ship’s rigging. 

 

The two walked up the grassy lip from the knoll leading down to the beach where the thick grasses with blades sticky with balm thinned out to the baldness of the sand. Anne paused and Jack stopped too, a metre behind her. She shucked her shoes, coat, and hat off as quickly as she had pulled them on. Jack studied her. Anne whipped around to him with a smile on her face so genuine it rocked Jack off balance. Jarred just enough to fall back amongst the beetles sleeping in the grass as she pushed him hard and turned the other way, tearing down the sand. 

 

Anne’s hair streamed out behind like a flag as she sprinted. Her bare feet were so quick, so even, the sand barely depressed for her. Her muscles pulled to life, stretching under her exertion. The temperate air felt good stinging her lungs. Bits of coral and shards of shells that had been orphaned on the stinking beach were sharp on her toes, but she failed to notice, failed to care. The ocean foam sighed, exhausted from its angry toil, as it ran over her feet. The water kicked up and made spots on her cypress coloured shirt and stained the rolled up edges of her pants. 

 

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Jack had given chase, his feet bare, one hand holding his hat to his head. He was right when he said they needed to revel in the fact that they were on land. Anne had forgotten the joys of running for the sake of running. It always seemed like they were chasing something. Once they caught the object of the chase, they found something else to pursue. She had forgotten how good the ground felt under her pounding knees and how the sweat felt running between her churning shoulder blades. She had forgotten how good it felt to push her lean body to physical exertions that were not hauling twelve - pounders into the air or climbing as high as she could. 

 

Granted, even Anne Bonny had limits and, knees aching and muscles burning, she awkwardly slowed to a halt and tumbled back onto the sand. Her chest heaved up and down, up and down, and her mouth was dry and caustic. She barely noticed the sound of the surf until it splashed up and over her face, leaving her sputtering. Jack gave a wheeze of laughter, just as out of breath as she was. 

 

Anne had always felt robbed of her childhood. From the moment she was competent enough, her father had her disguised a boy and called her “Andy” and had her studying to be a lawyer’s clerk ( whatever the fuck that is ). The toys she played with were not dolls, nor fantasies of her imagination, but rather concepts of business and the world of backwards morals. All the while, she alone combated the radically irrational parts of her mind that brought forth thoughts that were not her own. She once thought that marriage would give her respite from sure a droll world, and in a way it did, but she was thrown to the dogs to fend for herself. 

 

With what she had learned on that night about Jack, and what she had always known about Jack, Anne figured it was safe to assume that his childhood was, in some ways, akin to hers. Akin in the way that it was seemingly nonexistent. 

 

But now, laughing as they played in the waves, caring not for their exhaustion once the sun rose or where they would be a week from then? Hunting for squirming creatures abandoned on the beach by the waves? Running after each other with pieces of rank seaweed pinched between their fingers? Watching the lightning split across the sky as if they had never seen it before? It reminded her of the days that were good, of the tastes of childhood that were so hard to forget, like chocolate on her lips. 

 

Part of Anne despaired at the rather pitiful surrogate for the things she should have experienced as a child, but she realised the redundancy in feeling so. What was the point, yearning for something she simply could not change? She knew well that opportunities like that balmy night would not return for a long while. Would she look back on this night and regret not doing more, not delighting in more? Anne had lost too much, learned too viscerally to not live in the moment and die in the moment. 

 

As she stood on the beach with sand in her tangled locks and shells in her pockets and her soaked clothes causing her to shiver, the only man she ever loved stood beside her, and their shoulders brushed. Anne watched with an impartial eye as the eastern horizon began to blush golden and pink. She sighed, contented for the moment, and that was okay.

 

Jack’s keen eyes slid to the side before his head turned to glance at her. “I’ll race you to the grass,” he prompted quickly, barely giving her a moment to register the challenge before he was kicking up sand. Anne paused for just a moment, as she watched him go, watched the clouds shimmer like pearls in the virgin light of the day, and decided that if this was all she remembered of childhood, that would be okay too. And then she tore after him. 


End file.
